Grandmother, 3 grandchildren found shot, killed in North Dakota

Source: Fox News

NEW TOWN, N.D. – A northwestern North Dakota home teemed with FBI investigators Monday as they tried to piece together evidence in the grisly weekend shooting deaths of a woman and three of her grandchildren.

In a nearby community, a man described only as a &amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;person of interest&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; in the killings apparently killed himself just hours after their deaths.

Martha Johnson, 64, and three of her grandchildren -- Benjamin Schuster, 13, Julia Schuster, 10 and Luke Schuster, 6 -- were gunned down in the home Sunday afternoon, Mountrail County Sheriff Ken Halvorson said. Johnson's husband was out hunting. A fourth grandchild, a 12-year-old boy, was in the home but wasn't hurt and called 911, the sheriff said.
....

Both Halvorson and the FBI said they didn't think there was any danger to the public, but New Town, a community of fewer than 2,000 residents, remained on edge Monday. Slayings are relatively rare in North Dakota, which is home to fewer than 700,000 people. FBI statistics show that in 2011, only 24 murders and non-negligent manslaughters occurred.

Recently, when I hear of crime in North Dakota, I immediately suspect that it resulted from the disruption in life caused by the activity associated with the Bakken shale formation. That does not appear to be a factor here, at least so far. Back in the summer of 1993, I was in Bismarck on business. I recall seeing a huge headline in the newspaper, &amp;amp;quot;Man with knife robs store.&amp;amp;quot; That, in Mandan, ND, amounted to a major crime incident.

16. No gun, no multiple homicide?

At 10:15 that morning, 37-year-old former janitor Mamoru Takuma entered the school armed with a kitchen knife and began stabbing numerous school children and teachers. He killed eight children, mostly between the ages of seven and eight, and seriously wounded thirteen other children and two teachers.

The Akihabara massacre (秋葉原通り魔事件 Akihabara Tōrima Jiken?, lit. "Akihabara random attacker incident") was an incident of mass murder that took place on Sunday, June 8, 2008, in the Akihabara shopping quarter for electronics, video games and comics in Sotokanda, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan.

At 12:33 p.m. JST, a man hit a crowd with a truck, eventually killing three people and injuring two; he then stabbed at least 12 people using a dagger (initially reported as a survival knife), killing four people and injuring eight.

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested Tomohiro Katō (加藤 智大 Katō Tomohiro?), 25, on suspicion of attempted murder. The suspect, dressed then in a black T-shirt with a jacket and off-white trousers, was a resident of Susono, Shizuoka. He was held at the Manseibashi Police Station. Two days later on June 10, he was sent to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office. He was later re-arrested by the police on June 20 on suspicion of murder. During the trial, prosecutors sought the death penalty, and the Tokyo District Court agreed, sentencing Kato to death.

A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People's Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 21 dead and some 90 injured. Analysts have blamed mental health problems caused by rapid social change for the rise in these kind of mass murder and murder-suicide incidents.

On March 23, 2010, Zheng Minsheng 41, murdered eight children with a knife in an elementary school in Nanping, Fujian province; The attack was widely reported in Chinese media , sparking fears of copycat crimes. Following a quick trial, Zheng Minsheng was executed about one month later on April 28.

April 2010

Just a few hours after the execution of Zheng Minsheng in neighboring Fujian Province, in Leizhou, Guangdong another knife-wielding man named Chen Kangbing, 33 at Hongfu Primary School wounded 16 students and a teacher. Chen Kangbing had been a teacher at a different primary school in Leizhou; he was sentenced to death by a court in Zhanjiang in June. On April 29 in Taixing, Jiangsu, 47-year-old Xu Yuyuan went to Zhongxin Kindergarten and stabbed 28 students, two teachers and one security guard; most of the Taixing students were 4 years old. On April 30, Wang Yonglai used a hammer to cause head injury to preschool children in Weifang, Shandong, then used gasoline to commit suicide by self-immolation.

May 2010

An attacker named Wu Huanming , 48, killed seven children and two adults and injured 11 other persons with a cleaver at a kindergarten in Hanzhong, Shaanxi on May 12, 2010; early reports were removed from the internet in China, for fear that mass coverage of such violence can provoke copycat attacks. The attacker later committed suicide at his house; he was the landlord of the school, Shengshui Temple private kindergarten, and had been involved in an ongoing dispute with the school administrator about when the school would move out of the building.

On May 18, 2010 at Hainan Institute of Science and Technology, a vocational college in Haikou, Hainan, more than 10 men charged into a dormitory wielding knives around 2:30 am; after attacking the security guard and disabling security cameras, 9 students were injured, 1 seriously. The local men attacked the dorm in an act of revenge and retaliation against college students following conflict the previous day at an off-campus food stall in which 4 students were injured, for a total of 13.

August 2010

On 4 August 2010, 26-year-old Fang Jiantang slashed more than 20 children and staff with a 60 cm knife, killing 3 children and 1 teacher, at a kindergarten in Zibo, Shandong province. Of the injured, 3 other children and 4 teachers were taken to the hospital. After being caught Fang confessed to the crime; his motive is not yet known.

August 2011

Eight children, all aged four or five, were hurt in Minhang District, Shanghai when an employee at a child-care centre for migrant workers slashed them with a box-cutter.

September 2011

In September 2011, a young girl and three adults taking their children to nursery school were killed in Gongyi, Henan by 30-year-old Wang Hongbin with an axe. Another child and an adult were seriously wounded but survived. The suspect is a local farmer who is suspected of being mentally ill.

31. True

my point is that you don't need a gun to commit mass murder like Loudly seemed to say.
Also in China, anything over a pellet gun is illegal and to even own a .177 cal. pellet gun, you have to have a permit from the govt.

75. But you may have missed MY point...

In Western culture, it's more likely you would not commit mass murder with a knife because that's more abhorrent in general to Westerners. In Asian cultures, it's less likely you would use a gun for mass murder because it's more cowardly in their culture. Less guns in Asian culture means little. Less guns in Western cultures means more.

I suppose if you were to take that to an extreme, you might say that knives and other sharp objects should be controlled in Asian cultures... but I won't go there. I'm just looking for some logic in the argument. So far, the list of mass murder in Asian countries by civilians with knives don't apply in this case.

63. i thought this was referring to something more recent that i may have missed.

21. We're guaranteed the right to bear arms

So until that's changed I think simply some regulation is in order.

That beings said, this isn't 1781. It was all fine and good to defend your home with a musket, but good luck against an AH-64 Apache or a horde of satellite controlled drones with your deer rifle. That old argument that we'll defend our freedoms by bearing arms just doesn't really hold water with me.

72. Libya and Syria

Have/had 4th rate armies - absolutely not comparable to our own. If we unleashed our full might on Afghanistan they would all die.

Baron Munchausen: What's this?
Vulcan: Oh, this is our prototype. RX, uh, Intercontinental, radar-sneaky, multi-warheaded nuclear missile.
Baron Munchausen: Ah! What does it do?
Vulcan: Do? Kills the enemy.
Baron Munchausen: All the enemy?
Vulcan: Aye, all of them. All their wives, and all their children, and all their sheep, and all their cattle, and all their cats and dogs. All of them. All of them gone for good.
Sally: That's horrible.
Vulcan: Ahh. Well, you see, the advantage is you don't have to see one single one of them die. You just sit comfortably thousands of miles away from the battlefield and simply press the button.
Berthold: Well, where's the fun in that?

74. Well, I've already pointed you in the right research direction in post #68...

35. It doesn't matter.

That old argument that we'll defend our freedoms by bearing arms just doesn't really hold water with me.

It doesn't matter how much water it holds for you. It is the law.

Whether the law is feasible or not, the law still provides that the people have the right to keep and bear military-grade small arms appropriate for infantry use so that they can serve as soldiers in an emergency.

46. I agree

It is the law of the land and should be upheld. Certainly wasn't arguing otherwise.

In your scenario where we're serving as soldiers in an emergency - wouldn't that assume our own army has been defeated, otherwise seriously engaged, or pushed back to such a degree that whatever weaponry they had would mow a militia down? Witness what our firepower in Iraq and Afghanistan and further assume that whatever enemy was attacking us wouldn't have the same kind of restraint our own military has in foreign ventures. I don't think infantry armed with small arms would do much good. I could be wrong, though.

59. Foreign and domestic.

In your scenario where we're serving as soldiers in an emergency - wouldn't that assume our own army has been defeated, otherwise seriously engaged, or pushed back to such a degree that whatever weaponry they had would mow a militia down? Witness what our firepower in Iraq and Afghanistan and further assume that whatever enemy was attacking us wouldn't have the same kind of restraint our own military has in foreign ventures. I don't think infantry armed with small arms would do much good. I could be wrong, though.

Note that the militia was to be able to defend against threats both foreign and domestic.

Note also that the United States, despite its technological superiority, has won virtually no major military campaigns in the last 70 years.

61. Glacierbay and I were discussing that

And my assertion to your last point is that typically, we do not conduct total war against an enemy, and therefore have had our military somewhat hamstrung.

We lose against guerrilla campaigns, but in standard warfare we are undefeated by far. The only reason we are having a problem in Afghanistan or Iraq is that we can't truly go in with air and space power and systematically level villages, cut off all supplies, obliterate any and all resistance and utilize dreadful tools of warfare that conquerors have used since the beginning. What about chemical and biological warfare? Satellite guided artillery? Satellite guided enemy small arms? Guided anti-personnel cruise missiles? Tactical nuclear weapons? Is this militia going to gun-kata a cruise missile or a low yield nuclear mortar shell out of the sky?

The scenario is open and I am unsure as to how it would play out - but if we were invaded from abroad, I wonder if they would not conduct total warfare on those who resisted, their families, their towns, etc. And if you got into a civil war, I wonder if the same tactics would not be used - total war. Civil War history teaches us that Richmond, Atlanta (Nashville, I believe), Vicksburg, Charleston, Fredericksburg, all were mercilessly shelled and/or leveled and that the Union and Confederacy utilized total war tactics more often than not without regard to civilian populations. I think the only place they didn't burn was Savannah because it was just too pretty.

I dunno, its open to debate. But if things got heated enough for a civil war or a tyrannical government, given the tools of our military, etc., I still maintain that small arms would be of lesser importance. Not insignificant, but...

67. Precisely.

The only reason we are having a problem in Afghanistan or Iraq is that we can't truly go in with air and space power and systematically level villages, cut off all supplies, obliterate any and all resistance and utilize dreadful tools of warfare that conquerors have used since the beginning.

Precisely. And they could not be used here, either, without devastating effects to the tax base, which would have more of an impact than any weapon could.

I still maintain that small arms would be of lesser importance. Not insignificant, but...

37. Here

let me punch some holes in your theory, if civil war ever came to America again, the military would probably fracture, you would have whole units refusing to fire on fellow citizens, sabotage of weapons systems, members taking their weapons and joining citizens.

Don't forget that the Iraq or Afghanistan, so far they've done a pretty good job of resisting us, and lest we forget, my favorite, Vietnam.

49. Okay

Your split military is a scenario I hadn't considered so I'll grant you that - but assuming that either a foreign power or a fractured military in a domestic war might not show the restraint that the US military has over the years.

Again, though, and I can't stress this enough, much to the irritation of many of my friends, I believe if the law of the land states a right to bear arms, we must obey that law even if we don't agree with it.

12. Whatever. nt.

33. It is, however, still the law.

Your only constitutional argument was rendered obsolete at Appomattox.

I don't think any troops have been quartered in any homes since then, either, but it's still the law that troops cannot be quartered in homes, under the third amendment.

And that is the thing people like you refuse to acknowledge:

It doesn't matter if the law is obsolete or not. It doesn't matter if the people no longer have the will or ability to wage war against our government. It is still the law.

Until the law is changed, the United States Constitution provides that the people have the right to keep and bear military-grade small arms appropriate for military use so that they can function as soldiers in an emergency.

36. i don't see those words in the Constitution: military-grade small arms appropriate for military use

52. Well to be fair

A well organized militia sounds like 18th century speak for military grade small arms. It's all relative. Frankly, under the law, I think private militias should be able to be formed. Since the wording is characteristically vague for the founding fathers, its difficult to explain what precisely they meant.

In my humble opine, if a guy wants to buy a tank, he oughta be able to buy a tank. As long as he doesn't use it against his fellow citizens. Of course, in practice, in a modern state, this might not work out so well.

60. It is obvious. Let us take a look at the second amendment:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Clearly the second amendment here is saying that the people shall keep and bear arms, and one of the reasons for doing so is for service in a militia.

The militias were the intended military forces when the country was founded. The idea was that they would eliminate the need for a federal standing army, or at least be able to counter its strength if necessary. There is a reason why the founders continued the use of a decentralized military rather than a centralized one - they feared concentrations of power in the military just as they did in the government itself.

Obviously if you are going to keep and bear arms for militia use, this means that those arms must be suitable for militia use. It's also understood that the militias were infantry forces, not naval. This means that the arms must be suitable for infantry use. It's also understood that what is being talked about here are "small" arms - arms that can be fielded by the individual, not crew-served weaponry like cannons (though these were privately owned also).

So the second amendment is clearly about military-grade small arms appropriate for military use.

In 1776 this was a muzzle-loading handgun or musket. Today it is an auto-loading handgun and "assault" rifle.

66. a lot of people in rural areas depend on guns and ammunition

to hunt in order to eat. Also to protect themselves and their livestock from potential predator attacks.

In my little neck of the woods, we have a cougar, bears, moose, coyotes, coy-dogs, fisher cats, bobcats and possibly wolves. And I'm near the coast where it's relatively civilized. Inland to the north they routinely find one or herds of 20 or so deer slaughtered by coy-dogs, who hunt in large packs and, like dogs, thrill-kill. I've heard large packs of either coy-dogs or wolves within 100 feet of my house on the moose trail that separates my property from my neighbors. I had just let my lab-x out to pee, when I saw him freeze up. I opened the door, heard the howling, didn't even have to call him. He hightailed it back inside full speed and made a run for his "safe place" in the attic.

Our very small police department is closed on weekends. Last year a neighbor held a burglar at gunpoint from ~2am until ~2:30am waiting for the police to arrive.

19. Not necessarily

you can kill 3 people with 3 blows from a baseball bat, especially 3 children. This person was intent, for whatever reason, on killing these 4 people and whether a gun, knife, baseball bat, it would have made no difference.

And there is no lack of gun control, there are thousands of gun control laws in this country, they need to be better enforced.

29. OMG!

53. ...

thread got hijacked by the pro/anti-gun advocates. from what I'm told, the kid who did the killing was a meth user and went to the home because one of the kids' parents owed $$$ on a drug deal...yes, the energy boom here has brought in a lot of unsavory characters and aggravated social ills but that's a whole nother story...

56. Thanks for that info

76. On the one hand, with so many guns in this country there's no realistic, feasible way to get rid of

them all. On the other hand, the number of mass/multiple shootings we've witnessed seems to indicate that *something* must be done. What precisely that something is, I don't know. The UK, if I'm not mistaken, virtually banned private handgun ownership after the Hungerford Massacre (and others) back in the 90's. I'm not advocating such a step myself - and in the current political climate it would get absolutely nowhere - but our default response of essentially "doing nothing" hardly seems satisfactory either.

(CBS/AP) BILLINGS, Mont. - Authorities have identified a body found in North Dakota as missing Montana teacher Sherry Arnold, who was kidnapped in January.

The identification was made Thursday after the body of 43-year-old Arnold was taken to the Montana State Crime Lab in Missoula.

Arnold was abducted on Jan. 7 off a street in Sidney, Montana while jogging at the edge of town. Michael Spell, 22, and Lester Van Waters Jr., 48, were charged with aggravated kidnapping in the case and await trial.

Arnold's body was found near Williston, N.D., about 50 miles northeast of Sidney. It's not clear what led authorities to that location, although one of the suspects in the case had apparently tried to lead FBI agents to the site in past weeks but failed.
....

Court documents filed by the prosecutor in the case indicate Spell has confessed to his role in what an affidavit described as the crack-fueled abduction and killing of Arnold.

"Sidney, Montana" and "crack-fueled" are two phrases that, until 2012, surely never appeared together in the same sentence.